Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

New Year's Night Football in DC

The
Capital Bowl ends in overtime with John Boehner being sacked in his own end
zone as Tea Party teammates led by Eric Cantor scramble away from him still praying
for a Hail Mary pass.

The
metaphor comes with apologies for comparing the high skill level of college amateur
football with what went on in Washington this weekend. The play in the Capitol
was more like a series of sandlot scrimmages. Some would say sandbox.

As stock
markets rise in relief like anxious parents to see the battered kids still on
the cliff, rage and recrimination dominate Wednesday morning quarterbacking.

The
GOP grouses about the cost of the President’s trip to Hawaii for the
rest of his family vacation without acknowledging that it was their fault he
had no one to kiss at midnight New Year’s Eve except Joe Biden.

The
Veep himself emerges as the only hero of the fiasco by cozying his former
Senate friend Mitch McConnell into allowing the vote that broke the stalemate
there.

Otherwise,
there is no joy in DC’s Mudville as both home teams disgraced themselves in the
holiday sport.

One
of the few Democrats who didn’t vote for the Senate bill, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, put it best:

“Washington
politics no longer follows the example of our parents and our grandparents who
saw as their first job creating more opportunity, not less, for the people who
came after. My mother’s parents were refugees from Warsaw who came here after
World War II because they could rebuild their shattered lives. But the
political debate now is a zero-sum game that creates more problems than
solutions.”

The ugly
game is over in DC, at least for a few weeks, but unless something changes, it
will be played over and over again in the new year.